SPIRIT SOUL AND BODY

      "And the God of peace Himself sanctify you wholly, and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete, without blame, at the coming of out Lord Jesus Christ" 1Thess. 5:23. I take on this subject with prayerful contemplation as; the adequacy of the answer we receive is a direct consequence implicit in the knowledge we have obtained from the revelation of God which is available in His Word, as it says: "That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, The Father of Glory may give to you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the full knowledge of Him" Eph.1:17.

      It seems our God has big expectations of us, including the full knowledge of Him, as His word calls for a depth of understanding which must require more than a Quick ear tickling generic sermon, maybe a trip to the alter, and a few songs followed by a pot luck, which was once more or less my former settled for experience as a Christian; oh and of course a little bible study then desert. Well just what does God want from us anyway, after all it was His grace that saved us. And it was His predestination that brought us into belief. And now we are reminded each time we read The Word that He has these great expectations of us! Paul's statement on what he hoped to achieve in Christ in Phil. 3:12 was "Not that I have attained or am already perfected; but I press on that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus laid hold of me." The Lord then had a reason to lay hold of us and His word declares we are to lay hold or meet this challenge of realization of why by a diligent search that will involve all of us, spirit-soul and body. Therefore it is incumbent upon us to find a meaning for these three parts of our being so that we might make a responsible application of God"s desire for us to form a mature spiritual image within ourselves of our Christianity.

      Sanctify, there's that word again, it means separated, By who? by God Himself; and it is all of us that is sanctified wholly! What are we separated from? The world and all things common to the flesh, no part of our being is to be left to the ordinary or natural man, which is profane to God in all his ways. His Word also names three parts of us set aside in what could only be, a spiritual positional sanctified identification by The Father; spirit, soul, body.This does not mean the effect is not experienced here and now, but it must be the perception of the Father that defines its source, which the Bible declares is contained in Christ. The spirit is our innermost part which possesses a consciousness of God in the newly created Christian a regenerated mind/ spirit that was formally dead, and now alive, so that we may have contact with God Himself. The soul is our self or being which also contains our personality which after the new birth acts as a medium between our spirit and body, this is eternity or immortality occupying our mortal body's, or a knowledge of God which changes our total self, we now have a new self consciousness which is godly and will be carried into heaven itself; all this is accomplished in spirit. The body is now also effected in that it will be the contact with the material world to display the new creation that is in our spirit/mind and soul/personality. In other words the body contains the soul and the soul contains the spirit. God lives in our spirit by our knowledge and depth of understanding of who He is and who we are positioned in His Son. We are thus sanctified by God, Him taking possession of our spirit in positioning us in His Son which was accomplished on the Cross and subsequent  Resurrection and Ascension and realized in our new birth; this is regeneration. So it goes, God enlivens our spirit which impacts our soul /personality or transforms us into a new man/women in the body. Our mortality will be be transfigured at His coming by His sanctifying power, a new creature in Christ. All this is show to us by the Holy Spirit, which is the mind of Christ in us, which we grow in [The Holy Spirit] by this knowledge.

      The sanctification we have is complete, which is qualitative. The wholly is quantitative. In other words He perfected the sanctification of the soul, spirit and body of the believer by separating us in His judgement and evaluation of us and that by His Son. In the fall of man we were ruined contaminated and our spirit's became dead. In salvation our whole being, seen by God in spirit is saved set aside. That was accomplished by the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ and is held in representation by The risen Lord who humbled Himself and became a man for that purpose. It is then incumbent upon us that by the Word and by faith in His Word, we learn to walk in spiritual maturity and the Word's of scripture are the only guide we have as to what we are, and what we are is wholly and completely formed in Christ the object of a subjective understanding we must abide in. That is a spiritual position only realized by faith in a fact!

      What about the sinful action of our flesh on the earth in this body, so favored, in which we dwell? Paul had this to say; "For I do not do the things which I will to do [not sin]; but the evil I do not will [sin], this I practice" Rom 7:19. He goes on to describe that the problem is the sin that dwells in him [the old Adam nature]; then he asks who will deliver him from this condition he describes as death; and the answer, inspired by God's Words is that it is through Jesus Christ our Lord that we will have this deliverance! How? Paul's answer by/in his "MIND"! Above we have by Scriptures had described to us in the Word of God how we are wholly sanctified spirit ,soul, and body. How do we reconcile this image to Paul's dilemma who was living in the exact same circumstance as us; a born again believer? The answer might be in our first contemplating the non-corporal nature of God. He can be described as a un-embodied Mind, the Word [Jesus] became flesh. Here Word is seen in the Greek as a intention of God's Mind. The same Mind which created the universe. We, mankind, were created in His image, which in the Hebrew means shadow, not physical, in other words our thoughts/personality/spirit/soul are like God, non-corporal. All that image we were created in, contained in a flesh body, died as to ability to communicate with the Father when Adam sinned, he/we became dead. Now enters Jesus Christ and the answer found, to Paul's problem and ours, by His Judaical accomplishment on the cross. We were judged by The Father to die, as we sin, the sentence was eternal death for all mankind, but because of the Fathers great Love for us He carried out the completion of that Judaical mandate by offering His Son to to fulfill this, our judicial sentence. In God's economy [Mind], it was completed and all that we could be to God we became and was contained in that act and image of and by Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, who willingly accepted His fate, while living in the same body[flesh] as us with the same feelings as us, He walked by faith in a knowledge of His oneness with God, not depending on His own power while He was on the earth, as we are too also, in answer to Jesus prayer in John, 17. You see my friends all the power of God, and the Son's volitional choice to sacrifice Himself is contained in their non-corporal mind, which is Faith. So you see this sanctification  we so enjoy, while we feel it in our physical condition by works and emotions, is not where we must live in our eternal nature before the eye's of God, "lest any man should boast." Position is paramount in understanding our Christian existence. We hold the subjective truth in our mental/spiritual/soul in a wholly complete sanctified  image of who we are before God in the faith of this fact, by faith; Jesus Christ is the only object in which we can be defined held in God's mind, and we are held in that object in spirit as spirit, by the Father, our salvation can never be worked out are realized/defined, by our physical corporal actions or emotions, no matter how well meaning or good the intent may be!

      I believe that our problem today in the Christian world, is one of perception. Our brain, Adams organ, works by observations through the senses and processes that stimulus to conclusion. The basis for much of those conclusion's, at least the intellectual reasoning ones, is knowledge, that is already stored in the memory files contained in its flesh. But this, mans processing center can be influenced by outside forces. Enter Satan, the "prince of the power of the air," in other words the ruler and guiding force of the world system that Adam joined up with in the garden, and hence all of mankind, where we all live in our current flesh, Adam personality existence. He reminds me of a magician, using slight of hand. Truly as the saying goes, the magic is in the eye of the beholder. The prince, who is spirit, encourages his audience to look at his left hand while the rabbit is deposited in the hat with the right. In many ways I wish for times gone by for the Christian. Not so long ago most people in the world had very little in way of security and comfort their only rest from the strife of life was a hope for relief in the next. It did not take much to convince the average peasant that there was a God and Him by the Saviour Jesus Christ, as they were in much need of relief and had little diversion to convince them otherwise. The modern era changed all that and the magician has been at work and is enabled by it. He does not need his tricks for the unbelieving world, they are already taken in hook, line, and sinker. Now all his time is concentrated on those that believe, as they are the only ones he needs to fool. Then the question becomes were is our focus?

      I was talking with a fellow positional friend the other day and he asked; how many have come to you and said they see a glimpse of a new truth by exposure to your writing and conversation; which are dominated by a hope for the realization of the position we are held in the View of God, which is the same view as He sees when He looks at His Son, to be opened the their understanding? The answer was disappointingly low, perhaps with a few maybe putting their toes in the water. I was at one time resentful about this seeming lack of interest, no longer. I trust in God's timing to prevail and there may be many who are passing along the road to liberty than I am unaware of. I have no great need to receive a progress report. My gain has been freedom, joy and peace in gaining positional knowledge, and that is a much more far surpassing gift than some recognition that will probably only serve my prideful Adam nature.

      Some of the above understanding of spirit, soul and body were taken from readings of Mr Nee and I am grateful for his incite. I leave you with this quote from my new best friend and mentor J. Butler Stoney, dead these past hundred years or so. " I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus" Phil. 3:14. We must be truth centered to be Christ centered. " With a increase of knowledge and apprehension of the truth, there is a constant sense that we are not practicality up to what we have received; and hence the measure of our strength is not the enjoyment of truth, but to the extent to which we maintain what we believe in spite of every obstacle. It is the way in which we surmount the difficulties in our path, and not the enjoyment of the truth, which defines position".